Article Marketing Fox in the Competitor Hen House - Or Chicken Little?

Mike Banks Valentine

Copyright © August 10, 2005

I recently was asked by an author to remove a free content
article from a client web site where we had posted it (with
several others from different authors) to increase topical
relevancy at a site that fit the article perfectly.

This article was submitted to free web content list archives
which I'd found online. A search turned up dozens of
additional uses across the web. I began to believe that this
author simply didn't like the site that used the article and
was seeking removal to avoid competition. We took it down to
avoid an unnecessary battle over something we didn't wish to
fight about.

The site we used it on did compete with this person, but the
client site has more to lose than the author, because readers
could click through to the author site from the resource box
link and gain the customer instead of the client. Having YOUR
article on competitors sites is an incredible marketing coup!

You should be glad anytime this happens as long as they follow
your use restrictions and provide live links from the resource
box at the end of your articles. The client wisely saw topical
web content for their site more valuable than the concern of
that external link to the author/competitor.

It does immeasurable good for your link popularity as well
since that link comes from a relevant and on-topic site,
rather than from a useless links directory. Your articles
serve as 500 to 1200 word advertisements for your business and
if it appears on competitor sites, it is as if you have been
able to sneak in the back door and steal customers from the
competing site via your article. Would you rather appear in a
random list of links, or have 1000 words to convince people to
buy your products or services?

All of this just baffles me as a content distributor. All of
those authors that requested removal would gain a valuable
one-way inbound link to their websites from topical and
relevant content that increases their link popularity and
their visibility.

Why on earth would they want those articles, that notoriety,
that credibility and the high quality links removed? When
there is no copyright issue present, you gain far more from
use of your article than you lose by having an article on
sites you don't like.

I've got articles lose in the world that I'm not proud of,
simply because I've become a better writer since I distributed
them originally. Several are outdated and recommend things
that are no longer valid or, in some cases, not at all useful
for current standards in search engine ranking - but that is
because the search engine algorithms have changed and best
practices have changed.

That is why I now date my article copyright to clearly show
the date associated with the article. But I would NEVER
request removal of my articles from sites that have old
articles posted. They will STILL be more relevant and valuable
to me than any cluttered, off-topic reciprocal links
directory, because they are a link within relevant text that
gain link popularity and sometimes lead to new clients and
further visibility.

Removal of your articles from compeitor sites would be silly
in most cases and will reduce your visibility and your link
popularity. Be the Fox in the Competitor Hen House instead
of Chicken Little in fear of the article marketing sky falling.

About the Author

Mike Banks Valentine operates Publish101.comPublish101.com
Free Web Content Distribution for Article Marketers and
Provides content aggregation, press release optimization
Custom web content for Search Engine Positioning
SEOptimism.com
Learn at http://WebSite101.comEcommerce Tutorial

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